Theological noncognitivism

Short description: Position that the word God is not intelligible or meaningful

Part of a series on

Atheism

* Concepts
* History

* Antitheism
* Nontheism
* [[Philosophy:Atheism and religAtheism and religion]]
(Criticism of atheism / of religion)

* History of atheism
* State atheism
* Outline

Types

* Implicit and explicit
* Negative and positive

* Christian
* India
* Hindu (Adevism)
* Buddhist
* Jewish
* Muslim

* Feminist
* New Atheism

Arguments for atheism

Against God's existence

* Atheist's Wager
* Evil God Challenge
* Fate of the unlearned
* Free will
* God of the gaps
* Hitchens's razor
* Incompatible properties
* Inconsistent revelation
* Nonbelief
* Omnipotence paradox
* Poor design
* Problem of evil
* Problem of Hell
* Russell's teapot

* Theological noncognitivism
* Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit

People

* Anne Nicol Gaylor
* Annie Laurie Gaylor
* Aron Ra
* Avijit Roy
* Baron d'Holbach
* Bertrand Russell
* Christopher Hitchens
* Dan Barker
* Daniel Dennett
* David Silverman
* Ed Buckner
* Ellen Johnson
* Frank Zindler
* Greta Christina
* Hemant Mehta
* Ibn Warraq
* Jason Torpy
* Jennifer Michael Hecht
* Jon Garth Murray
* Kai Nielsen
* Madalyn Murray O'Hair
* Matt Dillahunty
* Michael Martin
* Rafida Ahmed Bonya
* Richard Dawkins
* Ruth Hurmence Green
* Sam Harris
* Seth Andrews
* Sikivu Hutchinson
* Victor J. Stenger

Related stances

|  Agnosticism

* Weak
* Strong
* Agnostic theism
* Agnostic atheism
* Ignosticism
* Apatheism

Irreligion

* Anti-clericalism
* Antireligion
* Freethought
* Parody religion
* Post-theism

Naturalism

* Humanistic
* Metaphysical
* Methodological
* Religious

Secularism

* Secularity
* Secular Buddhism
* Secular humanism

* Category
* Religion portal
* WikiProject

* v
* t
* e

Theological noncognitivism is the non-theist position that religious language, particularly theological terminology such as 'God', is not intelligible or meaningful, and thus sentences like 'God exists' are cognitively meaningless.[1] This would also imply that sentences like the negation of 'God exists' or 'God does not exist' are likewise meaningless, i.e., neither true nor false. It may be considered synonymous with ignosticism (also called igtheism), a term coined in 1964 by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure of Humanistic Judaism.[2]

## Contents

* 1 Arguments
* 2 Relationship to other non-theist perspectives
* 3 See also
* 4 References
* 5 Bibliography
* 6 External links

## Arguments

Theological noncognitivists argue in different ways, depending on what one considers the "theory of meaning" to be.

One argument holds to the claim that definitions of God are irreducible, self-instituting relational, circular. For example, a sentence stating that "God is He who created everything, apart from Himself", is seen as circular rather than an irreducible truth.

Michael Martin writing from a verificationist perspective concludes that religious language is meaningless because it is not verifiable.[3][4]

George H. Smith uses an attribute-based approach in an attempt to prove that there is no concept for God: he argues that there are no meaningful attributes, only negatively defined or relational attributes, making the term meaningless. An example: Consider the proposition of the existence of a "pink unicorn". When asserting the proposition, one can use attributes to at least describe the concept such that a cohesive idea is transferred in language. With no knowledge of "pink unicorn", it can be described minimally with the attributes "pink", "horse", and "horn". Only then can the proposition be accepted or rejected. The acceptance or rejection of the proposition is distinct from the concept.[5][6]

## Relationship to other non-theist perspectives

Steven J. Conifer contrasts theological noncognitivism with positive atheism, which describes not only a lack of a belief in gods but furthermore denies that gods exist thereby giving credence to the existence of a concept of something for "God" to refer to, because it assumes that there is something understandable to not believe in.[1]

Paul Kurtz finds the view to be compatible with both weak atheism and agnosticism.[7] However, Theodore Drange distinguishes noncognitivism and agnosticism, describing the latter as accepting that theological language is meaningful but being noncommittal about its truth or falsity on the grounds of insufficient evidence.[8]

## See also

* Apophatic theology
* Conceptions of God
* Fideism
* Ietsism
* Ineffability
* Mysticism
* Newton's flaming laser sword
* Problem of religious language
* Thought-terminating cliché
* Eliminative materialism

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Conifer (2002).
2. ↑ Spiegel (1965).
3. ↑ Martin (1990).
4. ↑ Martin (1994). harv error: no target: CITEREFMartin1994 (help)
5. ↑ Smith (1979).
6. ↑ Lazarus (2004).
7. ↑ Kurtz (1992).
8. ↑ Drange (1998).

## Bibliography

* Conifer, Steven J. (June 2002). "Theological Noncognitivism Examined". The Interlocutor 4. http://www.sewanee.edu/philosophy/Journal/Archives/2002/Conifer.htm. Retrieved 24 May 2007.
* Drange, Theodore (1998). "Atheism, Agnosticism, Noncognitivism". Internet Infidels. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_drange/definition.html.
* Kurtz, Paul (1992). The New Skepticism: Inquiry and Reliable Knowledge. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-766-3. ""Both [atheism and agnosticism] are consistent with igtheism, which finds the belief in a metaphysical, transcendent being basically incoherent and unintelligible.""
* Lazarus, James (2004). "The Argument from Non-Cognitivism". Strong Atheism. http://www.strongatheism.net/library/atheology/argument_from_noncognitivism/.
* Martin, Michael (1990). Atheism: A Philosophical Justification. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-0-87722-642-0.
* Martin, Michael (1999). "Positive Atheism and The Meaninglessness of Theism". Internet Infidels. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/michael_martin/meaningless.html.
* Rauch, Jonathan (2003). "Let It Be". The Atlantic 291 (4). http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/apatheism_beyond_religion/index.html.
* Smith, George H. (1979). Atheism: The Case Against God. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus. ISBN 0-87975-124-X. https://archive.org/details/atheismcaseagain00smit_0/.
* Spiegel, Irving (1965). "Jewish 'Ignostic' Stirs Convention; Dropping of 'God' in Service Deplored and Condoned". New York Times: p. 62.

## External links

* v
* t
* e

Irreligion

Irreligion|

* Nontheism
* Antireligion
* Post-theism
* Anti-clericalism
* Criticism of religion
* Parody religion
* Secular humanism
* Freethought

Atheism|

* Lists of atheists
* Demographics
* Religion
* History
* Anti-clericalism
* State
* New
* Criticism
* Discrimination/Persecution
* Implicit and explicit
* Negative and positive
* Existence of God
* Antitheism
* Christian atheism
* Hindu atheism
* Jewish atheism

Agnosticism|

* List of agnostics
* Strong
* Weak
* Agnostic atheism
* Agnostic theism
* Christian
* Apatheism
* Ignosticism
* Secular Buddhism

Nontheism|

* Criticism of religion
* Secular humanism
* Freethought
* Flying Spaghetti Monster
* Inconsistent revelations
* Invisible Pink Unicorn
* Nontheistic religions
* Parody religion
* Post-theism
* Russell's teapot
* Theological noncognitivism
* Transtheism

Naturalism|

* Humanistic
* Metaphysical
* Methodological
* Religious

People|

* Atheists
* Agnostics
* Humanists
* Pantheists
* Deists

Books|

* Breaking the Spell
* The End of Faith
* The God Delusion
* God Is Not Great
* Letter to a Christian Nation
* The System of Nature
* Why I Am Not a Christian
* Why I Am Not a Muslim

Organizations|

* American Atheists
* American Humanist Association
* Atheist Alliance International
* British Humanist Association
* Center for Inquiry
* Freedom From Religion Foundation
* International Humanist and Ethical Union
* Rational Response Squad
* Reason Rally
* Recovering from Religion
* World Pantheist Movement
* Brazilian Association of Atheists and Agnostics

Related topics|

* Countries by irreligion
* Secularism
* Parody or mock religions

* v
* t
* e

Philosophy of religion

Concepts in religion|

* Afterlife
* Euthyphro dilemma
* Faith
* Intelligent design
* Miracle
* Problem of evil
* Religious belief
* Soul
* Spirit
* Theodicy
* Theological veto

Conceptions of God|

* Aristotelian view
* Brahman
* Demiurge
* Divine simplicity
* Egoism
* Holy Spirit
* Misotheism
* Pandeism
* Personal god
* Process theology
* Supreme Being
* Unmoved mover

God in|

* Abrahamic religions
* Buddhism
* Christianity
* Hinduism
* Islam
* Jainism
* Judaism
* Mormonism
* Sikhism
* Bahá'í Faith
* Wicca

Existence of God|

| For|

* Beauty
* Christological
* Consciousness
* Cosmological
* Kalam
* Contingency
* Degree
* Desire
* Experience
* Fine-tuning of the universe
* Love
* Miracles
* Morality
* Necessary existent
* Ontological
* Pascal's wager
* Proper basis
* Reason
* Teleological
* Natural law
* Watchmaker analogy
* Transcendental

|

Against|

* 747 gambit
* Atheist's Wager
* Evil
* Free will
* Hell
* Inconsistent revelations
* Nonbelief
* Noncognitivism
* Occam's razor
* Omnipotence
* Poor design
* Russell's teapot

Theology|

* Acosmism
* Agnosticism
* Animism
* Antireligion
* Atheism
* Creationism
* Dharmism
* Deism
* Demonology
* Divine command theory
* Dualism
* Esotericism
* Exclusivism
* Existentialism
* Christian
* Agnostic
* Atheistic
* Feminist theology
* Thealogy
* Womanist theology
* Fideism
* Fundamentalism
* Gnosticism
* Henotheism
* Humanism
* Religious
* Secular
* Christian
* Inclusivism
* Theories about religions
* Monism
* Monotheism
* Mysticism
* Naturalism
* Metaphysical
* Religious
* Humanistic
* New Age
* Nondualism
* Nontheism
* Pandeism
* Panentheism
* Pantheism
* Perennialism
* Polytheism
* Possibilianism
* Process theology
* Religious skepticism
* Spiritualism
* Shamanism
* Taoic
* Theism
* Transcendentalism
* more...

Religious language|

* Eschatological verification
* Language game
* Logical positivism
* Apophatic theology
* Verificationism

Problem of evil|

* Augustinian theodicy
* Best of all possible worlds
* Euthyphro dilemma
* Inconsistent triad
* Irenaean theodicy
* Natural evil
* Theodicy

Philosophers
of religion

(by date active)|

| Ancient and
medieval|

* Anselm of Canterbury
* Augustine of Hippo
* Avicenna
* Averroes
* Boethius
* Erasmus
* Gaunilo of Marmoutiers
* Pico della Mirandola
* Heraclitus
* King James VI and I
* Marcion of Sinope
* Thomas Aquinas
* Maimonides

|

Early modern|

* Augustin Calmet
* René Descartes
* Blaise Pascal
* Baruch Spinoza
* Nicolas Malebranche
* Gottfried W Leibniz
* William Wollaston
* Thomas Chubb
* David Hume
* Baron d'Holbach
* Immanuel Kant
* Johann G Herder

1800
1850|

* Friedrich Schleiermacher
* Karl C F Krause
* Georg W F Hegel

* William Whewell
* Ludwig Feuerbach
* Søren Kierkegaard
* Karl Marx
* Albrecht Ritschl
* Afrikan Spir

1880
1900|

* Ernst Haeckel
* W K Clifford
* Friedrich Nietzsche
* Harald Høffding
* William James

* Vladimir Solovyov
* Ernst Troeltsch
* Rudolf Otto
* Lev Shestov
* Sergei Bulgakov
* Pavel Florensky
* Ernst Cassirer
* Joseph Maréchal

1920
postwar|

* George Santayana
* Bertrand Russell
* Martin Buber
* René Guénon
* Paul Tillich
* Karl Barth
* Emil Brunner
* Rudolf Bultmann
* Gabriel Marcel
* Reinhold Niebuhr

* Charles Hartshorne
* Mircea Eliade
* Frithjof Schuon
* J L Mackie
* Walter Kaufmann
* Martin Lings
* Peter Geach
* George I Mavrodes
* William Alston
* Antony Flew

1970
1990
2010|

* William L Rowe
* Dewi Z Phillips
* Alvin Plantinga
* Anthony Kenny
* Nicholas Wolterstorff
* Richard Swinburne
* Robert Merrihew Adams

* Peter van Inwagen
* Daniel Dennett
* Loyal Rue
* Jean-Luc Marion
* William Lane Craig
* Ali Akbar Rashad

* Alexander Pruss

Related topics|

* Criticism of religion
* Ethics in religion
* Exegesis
* History of religion
* Religion
* Religious language
* Religious philosophy
* Relationship between religion and science
* Political science of religion
* Faith and rationality
* more...

* Portal
* Category

* v
* t
* e

Philosophy of language

Index of language articles

Philosophers|

* Plato (Cratylus)
* Gorgias
* Confucius
* Xunzi
* Aristotle
* Stoics
* Pyrrhonists
* Scholasticism
* Ibn Rushd
* Ibn Khaldun
* Thomas Hobbes
* Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
* Johann Herder
* Ludwig Noiré
* Wilhelm von Humboldt
* Fritz Mauthner
* Paul Ricœur
* Ferdinand de Saussure
* Gottlob Frege
* Franz Boas
* Paul Tillich
* Edward Sapir
* Leonard Bloomfield
* Zhuangzi
* Henri Bergson
* Lev Vygotsky
* Ludwig Wittgenstein
* Philosophical Investigations
* Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
* Bertrand Russell
* Rudolf Carnap
* Jacques Derrida
* Of Grammatology
* Limited Inc
* Benjamin Lee Whorf
* Gustav Bergmann
* J. L. Austin
* Noam Chomsky
* Hans-Georg Gadamer
* Saul Kripke
* A. J. Ayer
* G. E. M. Anscombe
* Jaakko Hintikka
* Michael Dummett
* Donald Davidson
* Roger Gibson
* Paul Grice
* Gilbert Ryle
* P. F. Strawson
* Willard Van Orman Quine
* Hilary Putnam
* David Lewis
* John Searle
* Joxe Azurmendi
* Scott Soames
* Stephen Yablo
* John Hawthorne
* Stephen Neale
* Paul Watzlawick

Theories|

* Causal theory of reference
* Contrast theory of meaning
* Contrastivism
* Conventionalism
* Cratylism
* Deconstruction
* Descriptivism
* Direct reference theory
* Dramatism
* Expressivism
* Linguistic determinism
* Mediated reference theory
* Nominalism
* Non-cognitivism
* Phallogocentrism
* Relevance theory
* Semantic externalism
* Semantic holism
* Structuralism
* Supposition theory
* Symbiosism
* Theological noncognitivism
* Theory of descriptions (Definite description)
* Unilalianism
* Verification theory

Concepts|

* Ambiguity
* Cant
* Linguistic relativity
* Meaning
* Language
* Truth-bearer
* Proposition
* Use–mention distinction
* Concept
* Categories
* Set
* Class
* Family resemblance
* Intension
* Logical form
* Metalanguage
* Mental representation
* Presupposition
* Principle of compositionality
* Property
* Sign
* Sense and reference
* Speech act
* Symbol
* Entity
* Sentence
* Statement
* more...

Related articles|

* Analytic philosophy
* Philosophy of information
* Philosophical logic
* Linguistics
* Pragmatics
* Rhetoric
* Semantics
* Formal semantics
* Semiotics

* Category
* Task Force
* Discussion

* v
* t
* e

Theology

Conceptions of God

| Theism|

| Forms|

*   * Deism
* Dystheism
* Henotheism
* Hermeticism
* Kathenotheism
* Nontheism
* Monolatry
* Monotheism
* Mysticism
* Panentheism
* Pandeism
* Pantheism
* Polydeism
* Polytheism
* Spiritualism
* Theopanism

|

Concepts|

*   * Deity
* Divinity
* Gender of God and gods
* Male deity
* Goddess
* Numen

Singular god
theologies|

| By faith|

* Abrahamic religions
* Bahá'í Faith
* Judaism
* Christianity
* Catholic
* Islam
* Buddhism
* Hinduism
* Jainism
* Sikhism
* Zoroastrianism

|

Concepts|

* Absolute
* Brahman
* Emanationism
* Logos
* Supreme Being

God as|

* the Devil
* Sustainer
* Time

Trinitarianism|

* Athanasian Creed
* Comma Johanneum
* Consubstantiality
* Homoousian
* Homoiousian
* Hypostasis
* Perichoresis
* Shield of the Trinity
* Trinitarian formula
* Trinity
* Trinity of the Church Fathers
* Trinitarian universalism

Eschatology|

* Afterlife
* Apocalypticism
* Buddhist
* Christian
* Heaven
* Hell
* Hindu
* Islamic
* Jewish
* Taoist
* Zoroastrian

Feminist|

* Buddhism
* Christianity
* Hinduism
* Islam
* Judaism
* Mormonism
* Goddesses

Other concepts|

* The All
* Aristotelian view
* Attributes of God in Christianity / in Islam
* Binitarianism
* Demiurge
* Divine simplicity
* Divine presence
* Egotheism
* Exotheology
* Holocaust
* Godhead in Christianity
* Latter Day Saints
* Great Architect of the Universe
* Great Spirit
* Apophatic theology
* Olelbis
* Open theism
* Personal god
* Phenomenological definition
* Philo's view
* Process
* Tian
* Unmoved mover

Names of God in|

* Christianity
* Hinduism
* Islam
* Jainism
* Judaism

By Faith

| Christian|

* History
* Outline
* Biblical canon
* Glossary
* Christology
* Cosmology
* Ecclesiology
* Ethics
* Hamartiology
* Messianism
* Nestorianism
* Philosophy
* Practical
* Sophiology
* Soteriology

|

Hindu|

* Ayyavazhi theology
* Krishnology

Islamic|

* Oneness of God
* Prophets
* Holy Scriptures
* Angels
* Predestination
* Last Judgment

Jewish|

* Abrahamic prophecy
* Aggadah
* Denominations
* Kabbalah
* Philosophy

Theology portal

* v
* t
* e

Belief systems

* Abrahamism
* Acosmism
* Agnosticism
* Animism
* Antireligion
* Atheism
* Deism
* Dharmism
* Dualism
* Esotericism
* Feminist theology
* Gnosticism
* Henotheism
* Immanence
* Monism
* Monolatry
* Monotheism
* Mysticism
* Neoplatonism
* New Age
* New Thought
* Nondualism
* Pandeism
* Pantheism
* Panentheism
* Polytheism
* Process theology
* Religious naturalism
* Shamanism
* Shramanism
* Taoic
* Theism
* Transcendence
* more

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological noncognitivism. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Philosophy:Theological_noncognitivism&oldid=263446"
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template